Consequences, risks and side-effects of the license module “non-commercial use only”

In 2012, a group of German copyright experts released in collaboration with Wikimedia the German document “Folgen, Risiken und Nebenwirkungen der Bedingung Nicht-Kommerziell – NC” (Consequences, Risks, and side-effects of the license module Non-Commercial – NC). In this document, they explain all consequences of choosing a CC license variant restricted to non- commercial use only (NC) and make clear why its usage is often not necessary and even a bad idea for artists and institutions.

The public licenses developed by Creative Commons (CC) are tools to make creative works available for free use under certain conditions. As rights holders have different needs and motives, CC offers six different license variants. Some of the most popular license variants include the condition that the licensed works must not be used commercially. This has far-reaching and often unintended consequences for the dissemination of the respective works and sometimes even entirely thwarts what the licensor wants to achieve by choosing a CC license. This brochure wants to offer information on consequences, risks and side-effects of the restrictive CC license variants that don‘t allow commercial use

As often discussed on the OKFN blog, the Creative Commons NC-license can not be considered a true open license as it is not mutually compatible with for example, material with a CC Attribution-Sharealike (BY-SA) license.

After reading this document which was published under a cc-by license we decided that it was worth it to create an English version as well. We put out a request to the German OKFN volunteers and got a couple of responses. Within a few days the complete document was translated. Then, the original authors were consulted and they agreed to proofread the document. This was also a great opportunity to implement some of the comments they received from the German Wikimedia community after publishing. With the help of Wikimedia Deutschland, we were able to fit the document in the same design as the original.

And now in early 2013, we are very happy to announce the final version of the document translated to English.